In 1917, Gideon Sundback obtained U.S. Pat. No. 1,219,881 for a ‘Separable Fastener’ and designed a manufacturing machine for the fastener. The popular name came from the B. F. Goodrich Company which used the name for on a new type of rubber boots or galoshes and renamed the Sundback fastener the “zipper”. In the 1930's, the zipper came into widespread when the fashion industry adopted it for garments, handbags, and other items, and continues to be widely used throughout the world.
Zippers commonly take one of three different forms. Coil zippers employ a slider (also called the “traveler”) that runs on two coils which form the “teeth” of the zipper. The coils may be in a spiral form, usually with a cord running inside the coils. Metallic zippers use teeth formed from individual shaped pieces of metal attached to a tape support membrane at uniform intervals. Plastic molded zippers are formed like metallic zippers, but the individual teeth are plastic instead of metal, and have the advantage that the plastic can be dyed to the color of the garment. Plastic molded zippers are commonly seen in jackets and backpacks and other items where the zipper is exposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,603,327 issued to Leonard et al describes a zip fastener for a garment that includes a pair of electrical contacts at one position along its length such that opening of the zip causes a circuit to open to issue a warning signal.
British Patent Application 2,307,346A by McGlone describes a detector consisting of spaced flexible strips which carry contacts and extend down the back of a garment so that, if the wearer bends her back, an alarm is sounded.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,596,955 issued to Eves et al. describes a modified zipper fastener consisting of two strips of fabric which hold arrays of interlocking teeth that are locked and unlocked by the movement of a slider. The fabric establishes electrical connections between adjacent teeth using a conductive thread or conductive ink. Moving the traveler causes an increase or decrease in length of the electrical path through the teeth and the traveler, and therefore a change in resistance, so that the modified zip fastener acts as a potentiometer that can be used, for example, to control the volume of an audio system built into a garment.